Who Cares Who's Out There? (And what if they're not friendly?)

by Ron Kitson

Why are so many of the world's leading scientists spending so much time and all that precious money trying to find intelligent life in outer space? We have plenty of it right here on Earth. Well, plenty of life anyway.

Perhaps we should concentrate more on increasing human intelligence. There is no doubt a lot we could learn from an advanced society but shouldn't we just keep what we have here a big secret? I mean, do we really want them here?

Remember when Europeans discovered the Americas? Well, I guess none of us actually remember it but there are fairly well documented accounts of it in our history books. There was intelligent life here already. Not as advanced mind you but intelligent humans nonetheless who grew up, fell in love and raised their young across and up and down this great continent.

Then Europeans, who brought with then a totally new and strange religion, proceeded to slaughter thousands of men, women and children and eventually claim the land for themselves. When the natives fought back to defend themselves and their precious territories, they were called "heathen murderers."

Unfortunately, their spears and arrows were no match for the advanced weaponry of the new arrivals. Native North Americans didn't go looking for them, they found the Americas by accident while looking for a Western route to India.

People like Columbus who obviously didn't know much about India, thought this was it and therefore called the natives Indians. Not only were they not Indians, they also knew absolutely nothing about baseball.

These people who came in big ships liked it here and, as they grew in numbers, began to claim more and more of the land as their own and killed those who got in their way. Many were placed in reservations on land believed to be otherwise worthless. If and when they found gold on a reservation, they reclaimed the land and moved the natives as far away as they could.

They also brought strange diseases to the New World that wiped out huge numbers who had no immunity to them. They killed off almost the entire buffalo herd for hides even though the natives depended on these animals for food, clothing and shelter.

And now we're trying to find advanced intelligent life forms in outer space to come in their big ships to this wonderful planet earth. Why on earth would anyone of us want to do that?

Our universe is just one of millions they say, so there really is a good possibility that intelligent life does exist out there. We keep sending greetings via radio messages with hopes that someone out there will intercept and understand them, that they will see, hear and think the way we do and will want to come and visit us.

Thinking of late is that our radio signals may be diffused over these great distances to the point they could not be recognized and it is now believed the best way to send our warm wishes to anyone "out there" would be via capsules with pictures and samples.

But do we really want them here? How do we know if they'll be friendly, and will they insist on converting us to their religious beliefs or at least away from ours.

It is believed that Mars was once much like Earth but lost most of its atmosphere and water millions of years ago for some reason. God only knows what happened or if there ever was intelligent life on Mars and if so, what became of it.

If life did exist there, could we be their descendants? Did they come here and wipe out early humans or gradually inject their genes so their more intelligent descendants could breath our air. Did Ezekiel meet them?

If there is other intelligent life out there, one thing you can be pretty sure of, is that they are not just like us. They could be so tiny they could fly into our ears and leave little hand grenades or, so large they could stomp on us like ants and spiders. They might even decide we are easy prey and a good source of protein.

What we do know is that if they receive and understand our messages and are able to travel millions of light years to get here, theirs would be a far more advanced society than ours and we would be little more than animals to them with just enough intelligence to make good slaves at best.

I really don't want them here and I really don't want to go there. I don't want them to know about us and our wonderful planet.

They say they have found signs of water on Mars so better we work on restoring an atmosphere there. It's already getting crowded here.